The Bells
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: Thayet unpacks something she brought all the way from Sarain, Jonathan discovers a secret passageway, and the start of something that could either be catastrophic or Tortall's great love story happens, all in a sunlit sitting-room. Jonathan/Thayet


**A/N:** My first Jon/Thayet, written during the summer but only now typed up. I really think there isn't enough of this pairing around, compared to all the George/Alanna and Kel/Dom. Inspired by some Burmese bells I saw. **_Please read and review!_**

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They had been easy to take. The little wooden mallet, the metal shapes and the silken cord, all wrapped up together and stuffed into her jerkin the day she had fled.

They were a perfect reminder of home, or the best of it: a gift from her mother, who had been called the most beautiful woman in the world. Their sound, their shape, the feel of the dull metal and sleek, brightly-coloured cord, they invoked memory, the remembrance of the bright colours, of the songs and the stories, the lessons, the love and the bell-like laughter of her early childhood, only dimly recalled but unmarred by outside events. Then Thayet had grown up, and when she left for the convent, her mother gave her a parcel wrapped in soft felt cloth: the bells, to hang in her room. When she left the convent, fearful, every vein pulsing with the animal need to run _now_, her unthinking hands tore down the cord, heedless of the discordant jangle, and wrapped up the parcel once more.

The soft leggings, boots, cheap yellow-red-green skirt, shirt and travel-stained jerkin she had worn had been cleaned and put away, her bow cared for, the string and spare string coiled neatly, by George's servants. Rispah had lent her two Tortallan dresses, russet and dark green in practical hard-wearing fabrics, and had helped her take them in a little, mock-complaining that they suited Thayet better than they had her. Afterwards there had been other dresses, made up by Court seamstresses and often to Thayet's own design, as well as the wide breeches and longer tunics Thayet was busy popularising, and the travelling clothes, the green and russet dresses, were laid away in the small wooden chest with a defiantly unpickable lock Rispah had given her, and with them the felt parcel, where it lay undisturbed.

Now the woman they called the most beautiful woman in all the world, who could never hear it without sending silent apologies to her mother's shade for this arrant appropriation of _her_ title, sat in a chair in her sitting-room, holding a felt parcel on her lap. Otherwise, she was completely motionless. Golden sunlight, thick and heavy as honey, poured into the yellow room and lent a gloss to her dark hair, warmth to her creamy skin, brought out the colour in her heavy silken skirts. A sense of perfect stillness hung in the air- stillness, and tension.

There was a rapping on the panel of the walls, and Thayet's head shot up and she half-rose, began to speak words that would call Buri to her side, were Buri not on the other side of the palace-

"Blast," said the panel in the very recognisable voice of a recently thwarted Jonathan of Conté. "One moment."

After the moment in question, a piece of ornate decoration on the nearby fireplace twisted, the panel slid aside, and Jonathan of Conté stepped out. Seeing Thayet's startled face, he coughed and looked down at his feet, the satisfied smile of success vanishing. "Sorry, Thayet. One of the footmen found a secret passage in my study, and I thought I'd see where it went."

Thayet said nothing, her hand resting on the parcel, but her face must have communicated something to Jon, because he turned a dull red and added "There's a peephole. I could have checked if it was opening onto somewhere dangerous."

"But it opened onto my sitting-room, so you opened it." Thayet's voice was bland.

Jon was silent, still red with embarrassment, and Thayet turned back to her parcel, conscious that that had not been tactful, but she could not be diplomatic now, not now, not with the music of the bells playing in her memory and recalling songs in the K'miri tongue so painfully different from the Common she lived her life in, ringing in her ears. She felt her temples begin to ache and throb with a thousand different agonisingly familiar melodies and words clamouring in her head and a blind airless panic rising up her throat (_I want to go home take me home_) and all brought on by the white pattern on the red felt, and the bells she knew were inside.

Jonathan's hand landed lightly on her shoulder and she started and glanced up into his face: he was frowning with concern. "Are you all right?"

Thayet made no answer but a slight jerk of her head, lips compressed, that might have been a yes or a no, and began slowly to unwrap the package. She could feel Jon's interest, blue eyes fixed on the metal shapes, the cord, the mallet.

"What are they?" His voice was hushed, fascinated.

"Bells." She lifted the shapes out, the cord, the mallet, began to string the shapes together in size order.

"What sort of a noise do they make?"

Thayet looped the ends of the cord around his outstretched hands, and he pulled it tight without being asked. She picked up the mallet, weighed it in her hand and struck, gently, the smallest of the shapes.

The sound of the clear sweet high note seemed to spread, like ripples in water, throughout the still air of the sitting-room, somehow greater and more true than anything else in there, the warm wooden panelling, the large windows, yellow brocade curtains, buttery yellow upholstery. It held them both immobile for a few moments, dark heads bent together.

Thayet's mind shuddered with the metal of the bell, dragged agonisingly back to her mother's tower-room and sanctuary, to the few memories of the K'miri tribes that she had, and her heart felt torn and stretched by a nameless anguished voice that called to her (_why are you here? Go home, go home!_) and panicked her. And then the note faded, and the spell shattered cleanly, a thousand bright pieces glittering into nothing.

Thayet pulled the cord from Jon's suddenly lax hands, the bells swinging on it, and turned and walked swiftly towards her bedroom. Hands landed on her shoulders again, and turned her gently round to face their owner.

Jon looked down at her, worry and unaccustomed helplessness in his face, and one hand moved to touch the side of her face, tentatively, hesitating, and moved back to her shoulder. "Thayet- it will be all right," he said, as if the words were hard to say and had to be forced out through an unwilling throat. He bent his head to kiss her forehead, and her eyes closed involuntarily at the touch, so light it was hardly there, and then he was gone, two steps and away into the secret passageway, which closed smoothly behind him as if he had never been there.

And Thayet collapsed into a chair, her dress billowing about her, the bells dangling from the fingers of one hand, and rested her chin in her other hand and stared unseeingly out of the large window. For another note had sounded, as terrifying and unsettling as the first but not heard by any ear, and she knew not whether she welcomed it or no.


End file.
